Five Things Caprica Six Never Did
by Beatrice Otter
Summary: From before the fall of Caprica to after the Cylon-Human alliance, five things Caprica could have done, but didn't.


**Warnings:** None  
**Spoilers:** the whole series.  
**Word Count: **2,210

1.

Six bent over the stroller, looking down at the human baby. Such a waste, that Humans could breed as much as they chose to while God's children, the Cylons, were condemned to infertility, commanded to grow and multiply yet unable to do so. For that, alone, she could hate the Humans.

Still. It wasn't the child's fault that its people were doomed. It would be merciful, to keep it safe from the pain of a nuclear holocaust. She reached into the stroller, one hand stretching towards the child's neck.

"You do realize that that infant is every bit as much a child of God as you are."

Six glanced up in shock. "Gaius?" she said.

He leaned nonchalantly against the building in front of her, immaculately groomed, hair slicked back, with a sharpness and sleekness to his look that Gaius Baltar, despite his wealth and his attention to appearances. It was the eyes, she realized. Gaius was terribly intelligent; but he was also lazy. He did not spare the mental energy to concentrate as hard on anything as the person before her did.

She realized, also, that he wasn't really there. He was … almost a projection, of some sort, though she certainly hadn't created him. And physical or not, he _felt_ more real than the humans walking around her. Cylons had no mental illnesses as humans did; she was not insane.

"You know what I am," the being said.

Six's throat tightened. "No, I don't," she said.

He stared at her.

She looked down at the child, at _God's_ child, at her hand outstretched over it. She patted its head. Carefully. Gently.

"You have a beautiful child," she said to its mother, who was now watching her uneasily.

Six turned and walked briskly away. Not to Gaius' home, as she'd planned, but back into the computer center she'd just left.

She could not stop it all; there were too many pieces in play. But she could at least give the humans a fighting chance to save themselves from destruction.

2.

"That was a wonderful gesture you made, down there," Gaius said in her ear. Cylons bustled around her and Sharon Valerii, attending to their needs, cleaning up from the attack. Somehow, in all the bustle, they never walked through the space where Gaius appeared to be despite the fact that they could neither see nor hear him. Somewhere in the distance, the resistance fighter escaped back to his people, one death that was not on her conscience.

Six—Caprica, it was her sin and hers to atone for, she would take the name her people had given her and bear it always as a reminder—ignored the hallucination, concentrating on figuring out the best way to sway her people to her cause. She smiled and paid attention to each and every one around her. She would need to be trustworthy and rational, or they would shunt her aside again.

"You do realize that no matter what _you_ think, people aren't just going to magically give up their grudges, right?" he persisted. "Particularly not when it's the only thing they have. Even if you can convince the Cylons to go along with this, you can't expect the Humans to welcome you with open arms. You've destroyed their entire _worlds_. You've hunted them down like animals. They're not going to forget it just because you want them to."

There was a break in the press of the crowd surrounding her. No one was watching her. "You think we shouldn't even try?" she muttered, keeping her lips as still as possible so that it would not be obvious she was speaking.

"I didn't say that," Gaius said. "Just be prepared for it to be … messy. And hard. And heart-breaking."

"I can handle it," Caprica said.

"I know _you_ can," Gaius said. "It's why you were chosen for this. But your compatriot is already broken. Your people broke her."

"I'll take care of her," Caprica promised, looking over at Boomer. "I'll protect her."

3.

Caprica stepped into the muddy tent that served as a schoolroom, noticing the neat order everything was kept in despite the dirt and squalor that comprised the whole of the Human settlement on New Caprica. She shivered slightly in the cold wind, despite her thick coat. The Humans were clothed in thinner, threadbare clothing, and were less adapted to changes in temperature anyway; they must be freezing.

Laura Roslin stood on the other end of the tent, watching her expressionlessly. Another woman whom Caprica didn't recognize, dark haired and dark skinned, stood by her side, hostile.

"Madame President," Caprica said, bowing slightly. "I'll get you some warmer clothing. And make sure a school is one of the first buildings built."

"Don't waste your bribes," the President replied, voice as cold as the wind. And she was still the president, whatever the law said. Three days of watching Gaius Baltar fumble around, largely ignored by his own people unless he had guns backing him up, had shown Caprica that.

"It's not a bribe," Caprica said. "You have needs that I can help with. I want to help."

"I don't want your charity, either," Roslin said. "And if you want to help, you can leave, and take your people with you."

Caprica sighed. "May I speak with you?" she said. "Frankly."

"I can't stop you."

"No, I mean privately." Caprica glanced at the other woman.

"You have nothing to say that I want to hear." Roslin's face might as well have been carved from stone.

"_Please_," Caprica said. "Please. I think you will want to hear what I have to say." She held her breath lightly while Roslin stared at her.

"All right," she said at last. "Tory, go take a walk."

"Ma'am," the other woman protested.

Laura smiled at her. "Go, Tory. I'll be fine. And if she wanted to harm me there's nothing you could do to stop her anyway."

"I'm not going to harm you," Caprica said as Tory left, giving her a suspicious glance and skirting widely around her.

"Really," Roslin said skeptically, taking a seat in the only real chair in the room and gesturing Caprica to sit on one of the student's stools.

"My name is Caprica." She clenched her jaw; this was the first time she would say the words, herself. "They call me that because I was the one who infiltrated Caprica's defenses, which allowed our people to destroy your military so effectively and quickly." How simple it was to describe genocide!

Roslin straightened a little, but otherwise her expression didn't change. "And you're here to gloat?"

"No!" Caprica recoiled.

"It's a little late to apologize."

Caprica shook her head. "What I did, what my people did … it was terrible. Wrong in the most profound way possible. There's no apology that can make up for it."

"Then what do you want?" Roslin smiled, but there was no humor in it. No warmth. Caprica had not expected any, on this frozen planet.

"I want to atone for what I did," Caprica said, leaning forward. "I want this to work so that both Humans and Cylons can live in peace and harmony, building new lives instead of destroying each other. I want the violence to stop for good, not just pause."

"Isn't that what your little coalition with Baltar's supposed to do?" Roslin asked. "Why come to me?"

Caprica snorted. "It won't work. Gaius is too cowed to stick up for the people he's supposed to be ruling. Nobody on any side is happy with the way things are going. It's already fraying, and sooner or later everything will fall apart."

"And you think I can—or would—stop that?" Roslin raised an eyebrow.

"I think you can tell me what your people need. Not just the obvious things like food and clothes and houses. What they _need._"

4.

Caprica waited until D'Anna was alone before approaching her. "You've been having encounters with the Divine," she said.

D'Anna swung around to face her, backlit against the basestar's gleaming white walls. This encounter was too important to chance even the slight interference of projecting. "Where the hell did you get _that_ idea?"

Caprica ignored the veiled hostility. The Threes had always felt that the best defense was a good offense. Even when there wasn't anything obvious to defend against. "Visions. Odd perceptions. Messages carried by the strangest messengers. Things you can't explain."

"Gaius talks too much," D'Anna said sourly, throwing herself down in a chair and glaring at Caprica.

In fact, Caprica hadn't known D'Anna had confided in Gaius. She tucked that knowledge away. "I recognized the signs," she said.

"How?" D'Anna said. She smirked. "Is _that_ what that mess on New Caprica was all about? You listening to voices?"

"Partly," Caprica said. "You should take a lesson from it. The path you're on doesn't always take you where you want it to go. Particularly when your own people, your own model, can't see what's so clear to you." D'Anna flinched at that. Caprica had been right, this _was_ just D'Anna and not the Threes as a whole.

"What would you suggest?" D'Anna said. "Throwing this whole thing out for everyone to argue about? Give the Ones more ammunition to build their coalition with the Fours and Fives, create more arguments, more fragmentation in our society?"

"No," Caprica said. "I learned better than that. But you're not the first to experience things that can't be explained, and you won't be the last. Instead of trying to guide matters on your own, or trying to convince people who don't want to hear what you have to say, why don't you try working with those who might actually believe you? Who understand what it's like? There are more of us than you might think."

"So I get together with your little group of mystics and do … what?" D'Anna said.

"I don't know," Caprica said. "What's God leading you to do?"

5.

Caprica stood helplessly and listened to her world fall apart as Saul and … and his _wife_, the last Cylon, the mother of their race, argued. Not about the fate of the Cylon race, but about their own fears and jealousies. About her _child_.

Her dread and fear curled in on itself until she could almost _feel_ it, a sharp throbbing in her heart and her belly. Right next to her child. It grew with each volley, trying to force itself out. But it was not her place to speak while her elders debated. Debated whether or not to leave the Humans behind, to throw away everything she'd worked for since a bombed-out building on Caprica where she had finally admitted the destruction of humanity was wrong.

Surely, she was imagining the pain, a psychosomatic reaction to the strife around her. Surely, it could not be real?

Saul and Ellen argued on.

Finally, she couldn't stand it. "Stop, stop, just _stop_," she shouted. It was such a relief to speak, to let it out. "Will you listen to yourselves? You're supposed to be deciding the fate of the Cylon race, not bickering. You _created_ us—if you can't even get along amongst yourselves, how did you expect _us_ to get along? You're so caught up in your own petty conflicts you can't even see what's really going on!"

"And what _is_ really going on?" Tory Foster said scornfully.

"Something is guiding us, has been all along," Caprica said. It was such a relief to finally _say_ it aloud. The knot in her stomach was relaxing. She rubbed a hand over her belly absently. "We thought it was guiding us to Earth, but it wasn't. It's been guiding us _together_. Hera Agathon, the first child born to a Cylon, was born to a Cylon and a Human. D'Anna's visions of the Final Five, the four of you only learning who you were and admitting it when you did, the Cylon civil war, everything coming together only _after_ Humans and Cylons united, the way we Cylons needed the Humans to protect us from Cavil's side, the way the Humans need us now to save their ship—it's all connected. Don't you see? We _depend_ on one another." She stared at each of the others in the room, Final Five and those she'd known all her life.

She turned to Ellen. "It's not about my baby or your jealousy." She turned to Saul. "It's not about your friendship with Admiral Adama. This is bigger than that." She turned to Chief Tyrol. "You created us to try and stop the war between Humans and Cylons from starting. To try and build a world where Human and Cylon could live in peace. The war came anyway. But you can still build a new world, a new peace. But only we stay here and try and fix things instead of running from our mistakes. We've done enough running." Slowly, he nodded. She turned back to Ellen. "If I agree never to see Saul again, never to come between you again, will you agree to stay with the Fleet?"

Ellen shook her head. "This is not about you and your baby, Caprica. Nor is it about you and Saul, or even Saul and Bill Adama. This is about the future of the Cylon race."

"I know that," said Caprica. "Do you?"


End file.
